


In the declining years of the long war

by bayloriffic



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M, First Time, New Year's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bayloriffic/pseuds/bayloriffic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David thought playing Mulder again would be easy; he did spend almost a decade doing it after all. But the entire time he’s been back in Vancouver -- only two weeks, but it feels like so much longer -- he’s felt off-kilter and at loose ends. It’s not until Gillian’s there that he feels like himself again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the declining years of the long war

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NovaMist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovaMist/gifts).



> Takes place during the filming of _The X-Files: I Want to Believe_.

David’s only been back in Vancouver for a couple of weeks, but it’s already more than enough to remind him of all the reasons he pushed to get the show moved to L.A. all those years ago.

It’s December, the week after Christmas, and it’s really, really fucking cold. He wonders, not for the first time, why Chris decided they needed to shoot this damn thing in the dead of winter. He’s knows it’s atmospheric or what-the-fuck-ever, but it’s also just a pain in his ass. 

He talks to West and Miller on the phone every night. It’s sunny in Los Angeles. They’ve already been to the beach twice since Christmas, and Téa’s taking them down to the zoo in San Diego next week. 

It’s been raining since he arrived in Canada, an ice-cold sleet that turns everything gray and brown, and he's spent most of his time running around in the cold, chasing extras on dark, icy streets. 

He thought playing Mulder again would be easy; he did spend almost a decade doing this after all. But the entire time he’s been back in Vancouver -- only two weeks, but it feels like so much longer -- he’s felt off-kilter and at loose ends. 

It’s not until Gillian’s there that he feels like himself again. 

*

The thing about Gillian is that she is nothing like the women he normally goes for. She’s short and giggly and very invested in the kind of mystical self-help bullshit that has always driven him insane. 

But the other thing about Gillian is that she knows what it’s like, better than anyone else. She knows what it’s like to be trapped into this iconic idea that you can never quite escape, that you almost don’t want to escape, even though it feels like a prison. 

She arrives on set the day before New Year’s Eve, but David doesn’t see much of her because she’s trapped in hair and make-up, the stylists trying to get her now-blonde hair into something closer to Scully red. 

The next day, he gets to set late because the damn fake beard they’re making him wear takes for-fucking-ever to apply. Gillian’s over talking to Chris, and she smiles at David when she sees him. And then she must notice the beard because her eyes get wide and she pulls a face. 

“Hey,” he says, running his hands over the prosthetic sheepishly.

“Hi.” She’s grinning at him widely, reaching up to where the beard is already beginning to peel away from the skin next to his ear, her fingers sticking slightly in the glue.

He laughs softly and ducks away from her hands. For the first time in almost three weeks, David feels like this whole thing might work out okay.

*

Their first scene together is simple, the two of them walking side-by-side down a hallway. It’s not supposed to take more than an hour, but it takes them almost three. 

From the moment the camera starts rolling, Gillian can’t seem to keep a straight face, smiling at him goofily and giggling, and David can’t stop himself from cracking up, this kind of giddiness in the air now that the two of them are together. 

By the time they manage to pull it together without laughing or Gillian’s accent slipping, David feels like he’s finally back on track, like he’s found whatever it is he’s been missing since he first came back to Canada.

*

They’re having some kind of problem with the lighting in the scene, so they’re all just standing around on set, waiting for it to be fixed.

It’s their last scene of the day, but it’s a big one -- _Mulder and Scully, back at the FBI, what everyone’s been waiting for,_ Chris tells them before they start shooting -- and David just wants to get through it. Chris says it shouldn't take long to get everything in order, which means it’ll probably be at least an hour. David thinks about heading back to his trailer, but it’s cold and raining again, and it just doesn’t seem worth it.

Gillian’s over on the other side of the set, sitting on one of the apple boxes they’re always making her stand on for close-ups with him, and playing solitaire. He makes his way over to her, watching her for a couple of seconds until she looks up.

She grins when she sees him, and David wonders how long it's going to take until he's not surprised by their newfound easy affection for each other. “Want to play?

“I’m pretty sure solitaire’s just meant for one,” he says. 

She rolls her eyes and starts gathering up the cards, nodding at him to sit down.

He smirks and pulls up another crate, pushing it up next to hers so that they have a surface to play on. 

They end up playing rummy because Gillian swears that she’s terrible at poker and he won’t even consider her suggestion of Go Fish. 

Whatever’s going on with the lighting doesn’t seem to be working out very well, and after half an hour, everyone’s starting to get pretty antsy. Amanda wanders over after a while, leaning against one of the camera dollies and watching them play. 

“These first few weeks are always weird, aren’t they?” Amanda says after a couple of minutes. “Everyone getting situated.”

David nods vaguely as Gillian draws a card from the stack. She smiles and lays out a run of fives on the apple crate. Damn it.

He sighs and pulls another card from the pile. A seven. Shit. 

“Where are all of the goddamn eights?” he mumbles, way more annoyed that he should be about a fucking card game. 

He glances up in time to see Gillian smirk over her cards. 

“Shut up,” he says, and she laughs. 

“Okay, well,” Amanda mutters. “Maybe not so weird for everyone.”

She wanders back towards Chris and the rest of the crew, and David feels a twinge of what he thinks might be guilt. 

“Maybe we should try to make the new kids feel a little more welcome,” he says, watching as Amanda hovers over by the cameras, looking cold and sort of awkward. 

“Maybe,” Gillian says absentmindedly, rearranging her cards. And then: “We’re like an old married couple sometimes, aren’t we?” 

“I prefer to think of us as old war buddies,” he says, mostly because the marriage metaphor always makes him feel vaguely uncomfortable, despite (or maybe because of) how fond of it she seems to be. 

She snorts. “Veterans of the Battle of Vancouver.”

They play a few more hands, laying out their cards and not talking. It’s a comfortable kind of not talking, though, not like the kind of not talking they spent the better part of a decade doing.

“You two ready?” Chris finally calls over. The lights must be set up because everyone looks ready to go. 

"God, yes," he groans. They’ve played three games, all of which Gillian’s won. David comforts himself with the fact that rummy is one of the least skill-based games in existence.

“Once more unto the breach,” she sighs, tossing down her cards, and David grins at her, delighted. 

*

They wrap early because it’s New Year’s and a lot of the crew want to get home to their families. Some of them are going to this party Chris knows about, but David’s not in the mood for some reason.

“Any exciting plans for tonight?” he asks Gillian, the two of them walking out to their trailers.

She’s got her Blackberry out, texting as she walks. “No,” she says vaguely, thumbs tap-tap-tapping away at the keys. “I’m feeling pretty jetlagged, so,” she shrugs. “I figured I’d head back to the hotel, get some sleep. You?”

“Pretty much the same,” he says. “Minus the jetlag.”

She makes a quiet hum of acknowledgement as they get to her trailer. 

“Well,” he says, tapping her gently on the arm. “Happy New Year.”

She looks up from her phone, surprised, like she forgot what day it was even though everyone on set was talking about parties not five minutes ago.

“Yeah,” she says, slipping the phone into her pocket and standing on her tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the cheek. Her lips are warm and familiar against his skin. “You too.”

*

The hotel they’re staying at is actually pretty nice, but it’s filled with people dressed for the holiday, laughing and joking around, so David reconsiders his plan to stop by the bar.

Instead, he heads up to his room and grabs a couple of the obscenely overpriced miniature bottles of scotch from minibar, figuring he might as well take advantage of the studio’s generosity at coming back to do the whole Mulder thing again. 

He grabs one of the tumblers next to the sink, filling it with whiskey, and then settling in on the bed with the remote. It’s nothing but pre-New Year’s stuff, so he flips around until he finds a _Law & Order_ marathon on one of the basic cable channels. 

He’s made it through two of the scotches and three episodes of the show when there’s a knock on his door. When he opens it, Gillian’s there, wearing a hoodie and a pair of gray pajama pants, her face scrubbed clean and her long red hair piled in a messy bun on the top of her head. 

“Hey,” he says, smiling.

“I’m bored,” she says by way of greeting. “You busy?”

“Not at all.” He steps aside and gestures for her to come in. “I thought you were going to sleep.”

“I was,” she says, sitting down on the edge of his bed. “I did. But then I woke up and I was bored, so…” She nods at the TV, where Sam Waterston is lecturing the jury about following the letter of the law. “What’s this?”

“Seriously?” David says, but she just raises her eyebrows and shrugs. He rolls his eyes, because of course she’d act like she’s never watched American TV before. Sometimes he’s not sure how he puts up with her.

“ _Law & Order,_” he tells her, settling down on the other side of the bed, half-sitting up against the pillows. 

Gillian scoots up next to him, squinting at the TV. “Is it any good?”

David shrugs. “I guess. It’s… _Law & Order._”

She reaches over for his glass as a new episode starts. David grabs the remote, but she puts her hand over his. 

She takes a drink. “Leave it,” she says with a gasp, wincing as the alcohol hits her throat. “I want to watch it.”

“Okay,” he shrugs, taking the glass back from her. “But I’m warning you that you’re going to miss the last five minutes.”

“Oh yeah,” she says, one corner of her mouth quirked up in an almost-smile. “And why’s that?”

“Dick Clark,” he says.

She quirks an eyebrow in confusion, and he sighs. 

“Oh, come on,” he says, exasperated. “You haven’t been British for that long.”

“Oh!” she says, comprehension dawning. “New Year’s Eve -- I forgot.”

“Thank god. I thought maybe you were going to pretend like you’d lost all knowledge of American culture along with the accent.”

“Shut up.” She laughs, the sound rich and melodious, and David realizes suddenly how much he’s missed her. 

“Do you even have a television in your giant London flat?” he says, his voice slipping into a terrible English accent on the last two words. 

She swats at him, her fingertips brushing his bare arm. “Jerk,” she says affectionately. 

He smirks, and she bumps her shoulder companionably against his, reaching back over for his drink. 

They’re finished with the scotch by the first commercial break, so David heads over to the fridge and grabs a couple of miniature bottles of vodka.

“You know, I really haven’t ever seen this before,” she tells him as he settles in next to her. The bed’s big, but they’re sitting pressed up against each other, from shoulder to hip. Her toenails are painted a deep, dark red. 

“Seriously?” 

“Seriously. I have seen the other one, though. The one with the sex crimes?”

David laughs. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes,” she says. “It was…interesting.”

“I’ll bet,” he says, leaning against her. 

She’s watching the television intensely, her mouth open slightly. She’s doing that heavy breathing thing he finds incredibly distracting. Ten years ago, he found it annoying as fuck, but now he thinks it's endearing and almost -- God help him -- kind of adorable. He must be getting soft in his old age. 

Things between them are so much easier these days. Not like they were when they spent eighteen hours a day ignoring each other and only speaking to each other in character, both of them hating the forced intimacy of being everyone’s ideal platonic relationship or whatever the hell they were. 

But these days it’s better. He’s not sure if it’s him or it’s her or it’s both of them, but whatever fight was between them has long since evaporated.

They end up just watching together in silence and sharing the drink, passing it between them every couple of minutes, They get so engrossed in the show, that it’s not until the credits start that David realizes what time it is. 

“Shit!” he mutters, passing the glass to Gillian and fumbling for the remote. It’s somewhere buried under the comforter, and Gillian watches, one eyebrow quirked in amusement as he searches.

By the time it manages to find it and flip to the right channel, the ball’s already dropped, the people in Times Square laughing and cheering and kissing as Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest announce that it’s now 2008.

David glances down to where Gillian’s still leaning against him, the half-empty glass of vodka cradled loosely against her chest.

“2008,” she says quietly, taking a long drink. "Wow." She hands him the glass, and he finishes it off, the sting of the vodka tempered with the waxy sweetness of whatever glossy stuff she’s got on her lips.

“Yeah,” he agrees. 

“So,” she asks, still watching the screen. Some boy band is starting up, three kids in tight jeans bouncing around the stage. “Fifteen years.”

It’s takes him a minute to figure out what she’s talking about, but then he huffs out a soft laugh.

“I think that makes this the longest relationship I’ve ever had,” he confesses. 

“Yeah,” she smiles. “Me too.” She reaches over for the glass, but he doesn’t let it go right away, so they’re both holding it, their fingertips pressed together. Her skin is pale next to his.

“Hey,” he says, nudging her with his elbow until she looks up at him. Her eyes are very, very blue. “Happy New Year.”

She tips her head up to smile at him, and he leans down to presses a soft kiss against her lips. 

She’s still smiling when she kisses him back, and her lips are cold from the vodka and something about her just feels so familiar, like he’s found a part of himself that he didn’t realize was missing. When he runs his tongue along her lower lip, she sighs and opens her mouth under his, reaching up to press her palm against his chest. 

They’ve managed not to do this for fifteen years -- not really, not anything other than goofing off on set or rehearsing in their trailers -- but this, the two of them kind of drunk, alone in his bed, this is something that they’ve both studiously avoiding for more than a decade. 

He should stop this, he knows, but then Gillian makes this little noise in the back of her throat, nipping gently at his lower lip, and David leans into her, reaching down to hold his hand against her bone-white hip. 

She snakes her hand up under his shirt, her fingertips ghosting across his skin, and David kisses her, wet and insistent. When she reaches up to pull his t-shirt over his head, they have to break apart, and David looks down at her, both of them breathing hard. Her lips are red and swollen, and her hair’s a tangled red mass across the white pillows.

As she slides her hand inside his boxers, David moves back down, kissing her again and unzipping her hoodie. She’s so small beneath him, all pale skin and red hair and familiarity, and he really has missed her, so much more than he thought he ever could.

*

David wakes up to darkness and Gillian sliding out from under his arm. He squints in her direction as she rustles around on the floor for her clothes, watching through half-open eyes as she pulls on her tank top and her pajama pants.

“Where’re you going?” he asks, his voice rough with sleep. The TV’s off and the clock next to the bed says it’s just past three in the morning, the green of the numbers glowing brightly in the dark.

“Call time at four,” she whispers, nodding at the bedside clock. She’s zipping up her hoodie, and it’s just light enough in the room that he can make out the red of her hair, sleep-rumpled and knotted. 

He smirks and nestles further down under the covers, thankful that he doesn’t have to be there today for a few more hours. 

“Have fun,” he says, his voice muffled by the pillow. 

Gillian huffs out a soft laugh, and swats him lightly on the hip, a light tap of pressure he can barely feel through the covers.

“Happy New Year, David,” she says. He gives her a half-smile and she leans down, pressing a chaste kiss against his cheek. 

She smells faintly of soap and vodka, and he watches through sleep-heavy eyes as she makes her way out of his room, the door closing behind her with a gentle click.


End file.
